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I poured my words out in a whirl, one upon the other; and when I stopped I found her gazing on me with a startled face. "Glenure! It is the Appin murder," she said softly, but with a very deep surprise. I had turned back to bear her company, and we were now come near the head of the brae above Dean village. At this word I stepped in front of her like one suddenly distracted. "For God's sake!"
This moderation put it in my mind to question him of the Red Fox and the Appin tenants; questions which, I thought, would seem natural enough in the mouth of one travelling to that country. He said it was a bad business. "It's wonderful," said he, "where the tenants find the money, for their life is mere starvation. Balfour? No. And then there's one they call Alan Breck " "Ah!"
During a day or two, indeed, the new general might flatter himself that all would go well. His army was rapidly swollen to near double the number of claymores that Dundee had commanded. The Stewarts of Appin, who, though full of zeal, had not been able to come up in time for the battle, were among the first who arrived.
The crime does not seem to me to have been the result of a conspiracy in Appin, but the act of one hot-headed man or of two hot-headed men. I hope I have kept the Celtic secret, and I defy anyone to discover the other man by aid of this narrative. That James would have been quite safe with an Edinburgh jury was proved by the almost contemporary case of the murder of the English sergeant Davies.
"Well, my boy," said he, "there is one thing appears very plainly from our interview, that I may rely on your pledged word. Give me your honour that you will be wholly secret, not only on what has passed to-night, but in the matter of the Appin case, and I let you go free."
I could not conceive what he should be doing in Grant's house; I could not conceive that he had been called to the bar, had eaten all his principles, and was now currying favour with the Government even to the extent of acting Advocate-Depute in the Appin murder. "Well, Mr. Balfour," said he, "what is all this I hear of ye?"
He blinked at me in his usual way, and I said, 'Come on, Toby; don't keep us waiting; and, by Gad! he drawled out in a most horribly natural voice that he'd come when he dashed well pleased! I nearly jumped out of my skin!" Appin had preached to absolutely incredulous hearers; Sir Wilfrid's statement carried instant conviction.
"Well," says Henderland, "they're disarmed or supposed to be for there's still a good deal of cold iron lying by in quiet places. And then Colin Campbell has the sogers coming. But for all that, if I was his lady wife, I wouldnae be well pleased till I got him home again. They're queer customers, the Appin Stewarts." I asked if they were worse than their neighbours. "No they," said he.
"Set me on dry ground in Appin, or Ardgour, or in Morven, or Arisaig, or Morar; or, in brief, where ye please, within thirty miles of my own country; except in a country of the Campbells. That's a broad target. If ye miss that, ye must be as feckless at the sailoring as I have found ye at the fighting.
M'Collop calls Anne of Denmark a 'sad scattercash' and Mary an 'awfu' gadabout, and I am inclined to agree with her. By the way, when she was making my bed this morning, she told me that her mother claimed descent from the Stewarts of Appin, whoever they may be. She apologised for Queen Mary's defects as if she were a distant family connection.
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